On Tuesday, Nov. 26, ground was broken on the last two projects to begin construction under the latest round of the Cape & Vineyard Electric Cooperative’s adoption of solar panels on municipal land across the region. At capped landfills in Mashpee and Barnstable, officials from the towns, CVEC, and American Capital Energy, the Lowell company tasked with constructing the solar installations, gathered to mark the project’s latest milestone.

In 2010, CVEC completed its first, relatively small round of solar installations, mostly on the properties of public schools, in Barnstable, Bourne, Brewster, Eastham, and Harwich. That first round, which generates a total of 750 kilowatts of energy, was followed by another, much more ambitious project.

CVEC says phase one of its second round will generate some 116 megawatts of solar power. Phase two is projected to be even larger, in the area of 20 megawatts.

Tom Hunton, president and CEO of ACE, was on hand in Mashpee. After the groundbreaking ceremony, he explained the opportunities for renewable energy installations presented by otherwise unused land like capped landfills. “It’s just sitting there doing nothing, and you put solar on it, and you turn it into an asset,” he said.

Hunton said the installations will be completed, and generating electricity, in a matter of months; the actual construction process is relatively quick, compared to the lengthy preliminaries. “Once you get going, it goes pretty fast. It takes longer to get all the approvals.”

Hunton said credit for the project belongs to countless people in the individual towns, the region, and the state. “It takes a lot of effort on everyone’s part to make this work.”

Hunton singled out Gov. Deval Patrick for special praise, pointing to the administration’s ambitious goals for clean energy, which call for well over 1,000 megawatts of solar infrastructure statewide by the end of the decade. “Gov. Patrick has a goal of 1.6 gigawatts by 2020,” Hunton said. “And that’s very attainable.”

Looking ahead, Hunton said the shift from traditional forms of energy to renewable sources like solar and wind is perceptible. “It’s a nice transition, from coal, to natural gas, to the energy sources of the future.”

At the Barnstable groundbreaking ceremony several hours later, Joseph Bayne, CVEC director from Eastham, echoed the necessity for cooperation, and patience. “You have to aggregate the projects in order to get the financing,” he said, meaning that no single part of the overall initiative likely would have been feasible alone. “It takes a long time to get all the pieces together.”

Liz Argo, CVEC special projects coordinator, said cooperation between towns—not always a given on the Cape—has been relatively easy in this instance, due in large part to the clear mutual advantage. “It’s such a great project that the towns are very quick to embrace the proposal,” she said. “The towns have had to bend over backward.”

Page 2 of 2 - Despite delays and setbacks—such as Yarmouth’s ongoing struggles with parts of the phase two project planned for Dennis-Yarmouth Regional School District properties—Argo said the initiative as a whole is on track to provide a substantial portion of the Cape’s municipal energy needs. “The scope is such that we will have met two-thirds of the municipal load across the Cape,” she said.

The addition of still more installations, under future phases of the project, could eventually mean that 100 percent of the Cape’s municipal energy is provided by solar power. “That’s what we’re aiming for,” Argo said. “We’d like to be able to provide that.”

For now, CVEC will have to be content with the projects already underway, or soon to be, since state funding for solar projects has been exhausted. After Governor Patrick leaves office in 2014, future initiatives will likely depend upon he energy policy of his successor. “We are now waiting to see what the next program will provide,” Argo said.

Regardless of future initiatives, the current projects represent a substantial collective achievement, said Barnstable Town Manager Thomas Lynch. “What this project is doing is welcoming us to the 21st century,” he said. “For many years now, the town of Barnstable has had a green agenda.”

Richard Elrick, Barnstable energy coordinator, underlined the benefits of the project, which he said are not limited to environmental considerations. “This is an incredibly important project for the fiscal side of the town,” he said. “You really have the opportunity to go green, and to get lots of green.”

Dennis broke ground recently on a 6-megawatt solar farm on the town’s former landfill. That project, which will produce energy for the town and the Dennis-Yarmouth Regional School District, should be completed next March.